


Dear Bob

by ama



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Love Letters, Mutual Pining, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 00:27:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10708335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ama/pseuds/ama
Summary: Vera writes him letters, but she never sends them.





	Dear Bob

They come to her in odd moments when she’s listening to the news or washing the dishes—fragments of letters that she might have sent, if she were bolder, or if she knew him better, or if he had written to her first.

 _Dear Bob_ , she thinks one morning as her father hands over the news section of his paper.

 _I keep reading about what the 1_ _st_ _Marines are doing on Guadalcanal. My mother asked yours and she says that’s your unit, but honestly I can hardly believe it. Jungles and beaches, diseases and rotten food and Japanese soldiers hiding in the underbrush… I don’t mean to suggest you’re not brave enough, because I’m sure you are, but I can’t help but picture you in your uniform doing maneuvers on Main Street—maybe shooting occasionally at Japanese snipers hidden in the bell tower. It makes more sense than the other option._

_You must be busy, but I hope you’re safe as you can be, and I hope you write soon. Things are very strange with so many of you men off fighting. Everything seems quiet._

_Yours Sincerely,_

_Vera Keller_

She goes up to her room later that morning and writes it down on the crisp cream stationery her aunt bought her when she graduated college. She folds it up and puts it in an envelope, and that’s where she stops. It’s where she always stops. She doesn’t know how to address it. At first she resolves to go out and ask somebody how to get mail to someone in the armed forces, but then she thinks about how complicated it must be, how far this letter has to go and how many hands it must go through, and the longer she thinks about it the more ridiculous it seems. She doesn’t even _know_ Bob, not really. This would be the first letter she’s ever written to him.

She turns the envelope over and addresses it the way she always ends up addressing it: Bob Leckie, 52 Vernon Street, Rutherford NJ 07070. She puts it in a shoebox under the desk and forgets about it.

—

Sometimes the letters come to her at the most inconvenient times. One day she is in the deli and she runs into Mrs. Leckie at the counter. The older woman is in a cheerful mood so Vera pauses to chat.

“Good morning, Mrs. Leckie,” she says with a smile. “How are you? I’m Vera, Barbara’s daughter.”

“Yes, I know who you are, Vera,” she replies. “You went to school with my son, didn’t you?”

“In junior high, maybe,” Vera laughs. “But I went to Saint Anne’s for high school, and I imagine Bob might have stuck out a little there. How’s he doing, by the way? Have you heard from him lately?”

Mrs. Leckie nods absently as she browses the counter, occasionally frowning at the list in her hand.

“Yes… he doesn’t write back as often as we write him, unfortunately—I need two pounds of beef, please, the sirloin—but thank God he’s off that awful island at least. The canal one.”

“Guadalcanal,” Vera says promptly as she watches the butcher’s knife expertly slice through the pink, bloody meat. “I heard about it on the radio. The announcer called all the Marines who served there heroes—he thinks we should throw a parade.”

“And then I’d like two pounds of the pork loin—how many stamps is it? Oh, I’m sorry, one pound. Excuse me, Vera, I’m sorry. Well, if anyone can get Bob into a parade, more power to them. I can’t get him to dress properly for love nor money these days, and it’s a shame. I wanted to send him that dress blue uniform—it’s so handsome, don’t you think? All the girls your age do.”

 _Dear Bob_ , she thinks with a smile, _Your mother wants you to see you in your dress blues (and probably with a bride on your arm, I think), so I suggest you win a medal or something and hurry home… _

“They look very nice on the recruiting posters,” she offers faithfully.

“Yes, well, he said he didn’t want them. He’s on leave in Australia right now, which is _civilized_ , you know, and I’m sure he doesn’t look it. I must be going—have a good day, Vera. Say hello to your mother for me.”

_Dear Bob, I hear you’re in Australia. I’ve seen the pictures of Australian girls greeting American GIs in the papers and let me just say on behalf of us women back home that you had better behave, and you can pass that on to all your friends too—_

“Miss?” the butcher repeats, and she comes to herself with a start.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I need—let me check my list—”

Her face is hot when she receives her order and when she leaves the store. She has a little notebook that she writes the letters on sometimes, when they come to her unexpectedly like that. Although mostly it’s full of questions about the things she reads in the papers or hears on the radio. _Is it true you don’t have Navy support? What do you do without it? Are you a rifleman or a machine gunner or a mortarman? There was a colonel on the radio today saying every marine is a rifleman first. Really, what’s the difference?_ Today she flips to the next clean page and writes a short note teasing Bob Leckie about his dress blues, and then she shakes her head at herself and throws the notebook into the backseat of the car without signing it. Honestly, it’s none of her business.

—

_Dear Bob, I know it’s not fair but sometimes I really am jealous of you—_

“Have some more coffee, Vera,” Mary says, and the edges of Vera’s smile are starting to ache from the effort of holding it.

 _—because you’ve actually_ _left_ _! Well done! You’ve gone and done something, been a part of something bigger than yourself, bigger than this town and the small things it expects of us—_

“Of course if I wasn’t _needed_ , I would go,” Leon says in his high, reedy voice, his fingers drumming against the armrest. Vera makes a sympathetic noise in the back of her throat. “I really wish I could go fight. I’d kill a hundred Japs, you see if I didn’t, but my job is essential to the war effort, you know…”

_—and you haven’t done it for show. Maybe I can’t say that for sure, since we don’t know each other that well, but something about you just seems so honest. You’re likable, Bob, you really are._

“Come on, Vera, dance with me!” Tom laughs _,_ tugging on her arm.

“No thank you,” she repeats. She allows her coffee cup to jostle and he lets go, backing away from the hot liquid.

_But you don’t do things to be liked. I do. I’m tired of it…_

_I’m sorry. I’m sorry, this is horrifically selfish of me. I just wish I wasn’t stuck here, but I’m sure you’re wishing you weren’t stuck there, either. Really I don’t know what you’re going through._

There are scraps of paper jostling around in her purse when she goes home. She dumps it all into the shoebox, letters and notes and the receipts from her shopping, and makes sure not to leave any pens or notebooks near her bed. She sleeps fitfully anyway.

—

There is an Army recruiting station right across the street from the pharmacy. Through the window, Vera can see the recruiters, wearing pure white stockings and pure red lipstick, their caps are perched neatly on top of their precise curls, and their buttons gleam against the muted olive color of their coats. She keeps glancing at them while she shops, feeling guilt and pride warring in her heart. _Do your duty!_ these women say, making them real, breathing versions of their twins on the poster, and she can’t help but feel a surge of excitement because her own mother couldn’t _vote_ at her age, and Vera can vote and go overseas and help win a war. She imagines herself in that uniform and her shoulders square, her chin lifts.

But she walks past the table straight into the parking lot and composes a letter to Bob Leckie on the way home.

_Dear Bob,_

_I keep thinking about becoming a nurse. I took a few classes in college and I was pretty good at it, and I think I could be a big help, but I can’t. I can’t. I don’t have any brothers or sisters—I know nursing isn’t as dangerous as fighting, but there is some danger, and my mother… _

_Do you understand, Bob? Please forgive me for being a coward. I thought about the WACs, too, but—the way people talk, it’s so horrible. I don’t know how these women hear the things people say about them and keep calm. I’m sure I would slap someone within a month, and I bet they kick you out for that._

_I have a victory garden, you know. And I work as a typist in an office that does a lot of trading with the Army, and I buy a $25 war bond every month. Or sometimes every other month, depending. That’s what I’m doing. I hope it helps._

_Sincerely,_

_Vera_

_(In all honesty, I don’t know if the garden should count. It’s not really patriotic—as it turns out, I just love gardening. You can have some of my reapings when you get back. Have you ever eaten a tomato fresh off the vine? It’s delicious.)_

When she finishes the letter, she puts the pen down and stares at the postscript. She had written it on a whim. It’s only now that she realizes she’s making plans. Really expecting to invite her across-the-street neighbor over to pick tomatoes from her garden. It’s just—it’s so _silly_. Vera’s known Bob Leckie since she was eleven years old and she can probably count the number of conversations they’ve had on both hands. Sure, he said he’d write to her, but he hasn’t actually bothered. And when it comes down to it, neither has she. The shoebox is getting full but she’s never gone as far as putting a stamp on a single envelope.

This is a diary. That’s all it is. She’s picked Bob Leckie because… because he’s both familiar and strange, as disorienting and commonplace as the home front itself. Because she knows him well enough to be inspired by and envious of his freedom and his bravery, but not well enough to ruin the illusion. That’s all this is. She can’t get wrapped up in thinking of him as a real person. She can’t start picturing him interacting with her in a real life. Sitting in her garden and laughing at her jokes. Accepting a fresh-plucked tomato, slightly fuzzy, warm from the sun, and smiling at her.

She doesn’t even know him well enough to say if he would humor her and take a bite, or if he would look at her like she was crazy. She doesn’t know where he works, she knows he has sisters but couldn’t guess how many, and she can’t even remember his eye color. They were light, she thinks, but grey or blue or green? She has no idea. None of it matters, because she doesn’t even know him.

He has a wonderful smile, though. She remembers that.

—

_Dear Bob,_

_I went to the library today. I took out a book on the South Pacific and it says this is the rainy season there. It’s raining here, too, today, though probably not as much and not as long. You’ve been gone a long time—do you remember what rainy days in New Jersey are like? The asphalt has that smell, you know the one, and everyone (including me) is walking around huddled under a black umbrella._

_I walked past the baseball field on Reuter Street and saw a group of children playing ball, sliding into every single base and covered absolutely head to toe in mud. I don’t envy their mothers, but I envy them a little bit. And, of course, Mr. Sidley was walking his dog when I came home, trying his best to keep Max under the umbrella despite Max not caring one whit._

_I want to write to you, Bob, but I don’t know if you want to hear this. Are you sick of rain? Are you missing home, and I would only make it worse? I don’t know. You haven’t written to me._

_Sincerely,_

_Vera Keller_

—

Eventually she stops writing. It’s not a conscious decision, but the shoebox is filling up and her stationary is running low, and one day she just looks at the box and realizes she hasn’t added to it in several weeks.

On Saturday, September 2nd 1945, she writes a brief note— _Get home safe_ —but that’s all.

She meets Charles Dunworthy in January 1946. He’s nice. He likes to talk about politics and the Army, and so does she, and if he’s a little pompous that’s okay, because she likes his surprise when she reveals how much she knows about the world. Once they’re discussing the Pacific Theater and he starts talking about the Marines, and he gets so much wrong that she has to correct him.

“No, you’re thinking of Okinawa—Okinawa was the largest amphibious assault.”

“Well, does it matter so much compared to Normandy—?”

“Even compared to Normandy! In terms of both strength and casualties on the Allied side, Okinawa was the largest. The Marine Corps launched—”

“All right, I won’t argue,” he says indulgently in that way that means he doesn’t really believe her, and Vera shakes her head. “How do you even know all this, Vera?”

“I read the papers and I listen to the radio, how else?”

“So do I.”

“You’re in the Army, you focused on the Army. And on Europe because it’s romantic. You know, Paris, Berlin, Rome, all those places people already know about. I focused on the Marines.”

“Why?”

She’s caught off guard, though she shouldn’t be. She takes a sip of her coffee and shrugs.

“A neighbor is in the Marines. I’ve known him since I was a kid, so I followed his unit, you know.”

“A neighbor?” he says skeptically.

“He asked me to write to him,” she says in a _you don’t need to worry_ voice. “That’s all. I paid attention.”

—

Bob Leckie shows up on her porch three months later, and as it turns out, Charles had a need to worry after all.

Vera’s heart gives a funny leap when her mother tells her Bob Leckie’s at the door. She almost expects her mother to say just kidding, it’s all a joke, but of course she’s never told her mother about her box of letters.

She steps out onto the porch tentatively, and her heart sinks. She doesn’t recognize him. He’s taller than she remembered, and his shoulders are sharp and squared off in his crisp black coat. His hair is neat and his face is serious when he turns to look at her; he looks like every other marine.

Then he grins, and her spirits recover.

“Bob Leckie,” she says, hoping like hell that she’s not blushing. “You’re back.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t remember me either,” he says self-deprecatingly.

“Oh, I remember you. Last time I saw you was in church, right before you shipped out.”

He looks bewildered at that, amazed that she remembered, and Vera only manages a few more flustered sentences before fading into silence—but at least she doesn’t admit anything about the letters.

Bob doesn’t seem to notice her awkwardness. He steps back a little bit, settles himself, and in a formal voice says “I’ve been wondering if you might grant me the pleasure of taking you out.”

“You want to take me out?” she repeats immediately, laughter hovering at the edge of her voice. Is this for real?

“Yes I do,” he smiles.

Then she really does laugh, and she lets her gaze drop.

“I have a date tonight,” she admits. “When the doorbell rang, I thought you were him.”

At that very moment, Charles’s car pulls up at the curb. Bob goes over to him; Vera doesn’t listen to what he says but her eyes are fixed on the back of Bob’s head. He turns back to her and says “Maybe tomorrow night?” and her mind is already made up, even before Charles forces her hand.

She doesn’t really know Bob Leckie. But the fact that she has to keep reminding herself—that the Bob Leckie standing before her is as familiar as the one she’s been writing to all these years—is a good sign. Charles turns and walks back to his car, and Bob looks at her expectantly. He’s teasing her. He was never bold enough to tease her before, but she likes it.

“Looks like I am free for dinner tonight,” she says in a mild tone, and he holds out his arm.

—

He had been writing to her for years.

“What were they like, these letters?”

“Best stuff I ever wrote.”

Vera looks down at her hands. Her heart is beating hard and steady. Things had been awkward at first. She had been nervous, before, but now she’s calm.

“I wrote you, too.”

“You did?”

“I never sent them, either. They seemed—silly. Not worth the trouble.”

“Can I read them?”

She is staring down at her hands on the tablecloth, trying to ignore the warmth in her cheeks. Bob’s hand slides slowly across the table. He pauses just before he touches her, but Vera turns her palms up and he grasps her hand. His grip is warm and solid.

“I won’t judge you for being an amateur,” he says with mocking seriousness, and she laughs softly.

“I don’t have them with me right now,” she replies in kind. “But… someday, yes.”

“I can work with someday.”

His voice is soft and achingly sincere, and Vera looks up and meets his gaze. He’s smiling at her, and she smiles back.

(His eyes are blue.)


End file.
